In 1961, this submission letter — written by an aspiring 14-year-old author named Stephen King — arrived at the offices of Spacemen Magazine accompanied by a copy of “The Killer,” the short story in question. Unfortunately for Stephen the magazine’s editor, Forrest Ackerman, didn’t deem the tale worthy of inclusion at that point.

“A typewriter sits in the middle of a desk surrounded by a litter of screwed up paper, notes typed on file cards, and reference photographs of architectural details, erotic sculpture and gay pornography. Copies of the one-page synopsis of the novel are stacked on the desk, setting the fictional parameters as it describes the novelist’s thwarted attempts to write, his ultimate seclusion and his indulgence in clandestine sexual activities inspired by and in defilation of the building’s sleek Modernist architecture. The synopsis ends with the first line of the novel: ‘A novelist is living in an exquisitely crafted modernist house …’, a line we see typed on the sheet of paper in the typewriter.” (Kirsty Bell in Frieze Magazine, Issue 132, June–August 2010)